


Burn

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 06:33:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaylee gets some sun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn

 

Mal said, "Get some sun, all of you. You get rickets after this week, it's on your own head."

 

A week is how long it's supposed to take for the engine parts they need to finish travelling. They're in the mountains, two hours from the nearest city, but the metal bits in question are off-world. Kaylee spends two days fixing bits and pieces around Serenity, then gets bored and goes walking. It's too much like home to be really pretty -- isolated and mostly full of farmers who've never seen anything but their own fields -- but the village is semi-friendly and the food's cheap. Somewhere in these mountains there are orchards, and whenever a convoy comes though there's suddenly a lot of fruit. The first night, she gorged herself on peaches and threw up even before she had time to be really sick.

 

She's more careful now, but the food here has actual colour and smell, and it's hard to resist. A handful of cherries, a skewer of something fried, goat's milk in a metal cup. Fish swim in half-barrels in the market.

 

Outside the village, there are long stretches of rice fields and a shallow river, dammed every mile. The day's hot and hazy-clear, enough to send her swimming and feeling small fish with her toes.

 

"Pretty grey frogs. You've been sleeping too long."

 

River, Simon-less and shirtless, peers over the earth-dam at her. She's freckled and rapidly burning in the sun. Kaylee can't smell even a whiff of sunscreen; she wonders whether Simon knows River's gone.

 

She strokes over and peers back over the wall. Her own sunscreen's a mess of colours, showing brighter where the sun hits it. She can always tell where she's put it and where she hasn't. "Hey, honey. You're gonna peel."

 

"Like a grape."

 

"Um, okay. C'mere." Both of them in the messy grass at the edge, getting muddier than Kaylee really expected. Pulls River in between her legs and rubs sunscreen over the burned shoulders. Hot, dry skin in her palms. Down to her waist, along her legs, up her neck to her hairline. Along her cheekbones. "Wanna come swimming with me?"

 

"Scorpions sink."

 

"Yeah, even I know that story, but you don't sting, and I'm pretty sure you don't have a gun on you." Or anything except a skirt. Bare feet, bare hips under that skirt. Soft bare breasts in the sun, coiling their colours as the sun heats them.

 

*

 

She lies in the mud, finally, to get away from the bugs. She'll swim again before she goes back to Serenity, get cleaned up. Her overalls are already scrubbed out and lying in the grass higher up the bank. Met a farmer while she was washing them, naked squatting in the shallows and suddenly someone on the other side rose up out of the grass, staring.

 

"What?"

 

"Quin chan ai-o." Not even Cantonese, just barely related. She almost expected him to crawl in with her.

 

"Little creatures crawl out of the water and leave their shells behind."

 

"Hi, honey." River, again. Still half naked, carrying something in both hands Kaylee hopes is only messy and not dangerous. "Whatcha got?"

 

River grins. Opens her palms to show a dozen miniature eggs, boiled and skewered. Crawls into the mud and settles on top of Kaylee, feeds her nine of the eggs before eating the other three herself. Delicate, perfect teeth pulling globes off the sharp wood.

 

*

 

Medical lotions and aloe vera at the end of the day. Everyone but Simon and Zoe is burned and aching. Simon never went out, she thinks. Zoe stretched out Serenity's hull with Wash, spent the day licking him and soaking up radiation, and now she only glows. Little smirk while she rubs anaesthetic onto Wash's peeling belly.

 

Simon traces the swirls of River's skin that Kaylee missed, absently. Little pattern of hand-marks in sunburn. It looks like some kind of body-painting adventure that went a little wrong.

 

Kaylee's curled up in her bunk, enjoying the leftover flare of the sun in her skin and dozing, when River drops in. Naked and patterned in burn and pale skin and fragments of sunscreen. She's fish-pale from waist to knee, then swirled with red and white.

 

Soft, interested little tongue starts at her throat and works down. It traces the lines of her own burn. Fingertips on her paler skin her pubic hair protected. Under her breasts where the light didn't reach, down her rear where she was sitting too often to colour it properly. River straddles her, bends over her like an interested animal. She drags her nails down River's white thigh, pulls it into colour with the rest of her.

 

She thinks they both taste like bright plants and dust. River spreads out next to her, hooks a leg over her hip, and it's like swimming again. Wet fingers reaching into places she can't see, salty when she opens her mouth.

 

River's mad and trouble and worth taking her time over -- kiss her and cuddle her for an hour and she'll lose track of you a dozen times and still be sweeter when you take her. Her body remembers. Breasts that lift a bit every time Kaylee touches them. Nipples she can palm and work and suck. Rub her thigh up between River's and let the girl rock on her.

 

Down on her knees on the metal floor, finally, with River's legs over her shoulders and her face buried in wet flesh. Tongue rubbing her clit and licking in, half-listening to the things River tells her about wings and shells and water animals. Just. If she's very careful, she can hear River's voice change, too. She sings the parts she likes, and she snags her fingers in Kaylee's hair when she's close. Holding her there while she licks the same tight point over and over again, pushing until River lets go and twists under her.

 

On her own stripped-down bed, on her back, with River's fingers pushed up in her deep enough she wonders whether they'll scratch at her breath. Twist and fuck of them, sharp and bright and good, slick with both of them. River licks herself off Kaylee's face and hooks into her, rubbing slick muscle while Kaylee hisses and moans.

 

Still shaking her orgasm out when River licks her throat one more time, stands up, and leaves. Naked girl wandering the ship, but really, who would touch her?

 

On the floor, there's a pile of food -- peeled grapes, boiled eggs, roasted chicken in hot sauce. Broth in a sealed jar. River feeds her like this all the time, and she still hasn't figured it out. It's unavoidable, though. Everything here has to be eaten by morning or it'll go off.

 

She'll be licking it from her fingers all night.

 

 


End file.
